Tainted science

Climate-change research fraud is an outrage

This editorial page has accepted the predominant view of the scientific community that global warming is occurring partly because of mankind’s industrial activity, specifically the release of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” into the atmosphere. This view was strongly buttressed by a March 2007 editorial board interview with climate change experts Tony Haymet and Richard C.J. Somervill of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who laid out a comprehensive view of the scientific case for global warming and the risks it posed to civilization.

But after the events of recent weeks, we have deep doubts about at least one assertion of Haymet’s: that climate researchers operate in “a very open community.” Instead, the recent leak of thousands of e-mails to and from scientists at the University of East Anglia in England, the world’s most influential climate research center, showed something else entirely.

The e-mails described systematic manipulation of data to promote conventional wisdom on global warming and of trying to marginalize or harm scientists with contrary theories. They spoke of deleting e-mails, documents and raw data that were the target of public records requests, in apparent violation of British law.

On Sunday, the Times of London reported that this information purge included “much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based” – meaning the key conclusions of East Anglia scientists cannot be subject to independent review.

The leaked e-mails also included an extraordinary admission. U.S. scientist Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, wrote on Oct. 12 that “we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t” – a reference to the fact that global temperatures haven’t gone up in more than a decade. Why is this a “travesty”? Because of the grand claims that climate scientists have made for years about the validity of their research and the strength of their predictive models. They should be able to explain what’s going on. It appears they can’t come close.

Yet even after this scandal, environmentalists and their political allies still want the world to remake its economy – redirecting trillions of dollars in economic activity – based on East Anglia’s research. They downplay, even dismiss, the clear evidence of academic fraud.

The White House has adopted this dismissive approach to the scandal as well. President Barack Obama plans to attend the international conference on what the world should do about global warming that begins Monday in Copenhagen. This conference is being held in great part because of the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – which were among the very reports that scientists discussed manipulating in the leaked e-mails.

This outrageous scandal must not and cannot be dismissed. It must be investigated – by the United Nations, by Congress, by the National Academy of Sciences – until every last bit of tainted science has been exposed and excluded from the climate change debate. Given the stakes, it would be a travesty to do otherwise.